Perspective
by emilycare
Summary: Four single-character vignettes focusing on Lucy and Wyatt. Getting to hear from Noah and Jess. Lots of romantic angst. No plot.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Shedding some light on Lucy & Wyatt's back-stories, and getting some screen time for two little-seen ****characters. No plot. There will be four chapters. Reviews** **very welcome. This is my first fanfic. I have no ownership of** **Timeless in any way.**

 **Title: Perspective**

 **Chapter 1: Noah**

Our engagement party was supposed to begin our lives together, not end it.

I wasn't worried when she was late. She often gets lost in research or talks with her students long past the end of class. Her dedication to others was one of the first things that drew me to her.

I remember the day we met. Carolyn invited me to a talk she was giving on the secret history of women's lives in the Middle Ages. She oh-so-gracefully suggested I sit with her daughter and got me to promise to join them for dinner afterwards. She knew I'd be taken with Lucy. Her brilliance, her confidence, her beauty. Of course, Lucy got a frantic text from a student half-way through our meal, and we couldn't convince her to stay.

Now I feel like that should have been a warning to me. At the time, it made me want to be the person she would drop everything for.

We loved to travel together. I loved to travel with her. Both our lives were busy. Establishing my practice meant long hours and exhausting work. She had her plan. She was working towards tenure, towards becoming chair of the department, so she went above and beyond in every way she could. She was working so hard to follow in the footsteps of her Mother. Trying to fill those shoes drove her. Taking a break from everything to travel was one of the main ways we could focus on one another. Well, sort of.

That day at Cancún, I finally got her to spend a day with me at the beach. She'd spent three days prowling around Cobá. She was enthralled with the pyramids. She followed the white roads, wondering what it must have been like for these people who lived so long before us.

When I proposed, she was dumbfounded. Her mother had been dropping hints for months it seemed, and my friends had given up listening to me talk about when would be the perfect time. But Lucy was surprised. She looked at the ring, and then looked at me, and I think that was the moment she truly realized I wasn't going to disappear on her. That my being with her meant just that—I wanted to be there. With her.

She never talked about her father. It was like this strange absence that neither Lucy or Carolyn ever acknowledged. No story of how he died or was lost. No stories of a parting of ways with Carolyn sadder but wiser. Not even a rare rant about how that asshole left them alone. Just...nothing. As though he had never existed.

But obviously he did. Lucy was the proof. My Lucy. Until...

She came back from work that day and she was a different person. So cold, so closed off. She tried to hide it from me but it was clear something had changed. She looked at me like I was a stranger. We were celebrating our commitment to spend our lives together, but when I touched her I could feel her trying not to pull away. The space between us that collapsed the day I asked her to be mine had come back, yawning like a chasm. But this time I could barely see her. I had no idea where she went. She was somewhere I couldn't follow. At the time I thought it must have been part of her reaction to losing her shot at tenure. How could she fulfill her Mother's dream? But she never even mentioned University. As though it and I were lost to her already, but maybe she didn't care.

And something else strange happened that night: Lucy asked Carolyn about her Father. The very first time I'd ever heard her bring him up. That can't be a coincidence.

Maybe our closeness was just wishful thinking on my part? Maybe it was her Mother that pushed us together. "The perfect pair," she called us. "Two apples from the same tree." Maybe the hurt Lucy had from losing her Father was between us all the time but I just couldn't see it. She always focused on what other people needed. Focused on finding the truth and sharing it with others. But never looked for her own, until that day.

I know I can't make her open up to me. I've got to give her time to come to me on her own. That's always how she's been.

But I don't know how long I can wait. I don't know if she knows what she needs. Maybe I should think about what I need. Can I really give my life to someone who doesn't trust me? Who won't let me in and share her pain? Who wants to save the world, but doesn't have time for me?

Beautiful, Lucy. Please come back. Or let me go.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: This is the longest chapter. Hoping to do justice to Jess. With great indebtedness to various Wyatt backstory ff here:** **Fractures, Wyatt POV, Unmade, Adrift, What Makes Us and What If. Nod to What Makes Us with one of Wyatt's languages.**

 **Chapter 2: Jessica**

Wyatt coming home was supposed to bring our lives back together, not end it.

He was so sweet in high school. You'd never have guessed he would be so romantic from that tough guy exterior he had. Rough and tumble, ready for a fight, but once you looked beyond that, he was always thinking of others' feelings. Ready to stand up for people who couldn't defend themselves. And so aware. He'd see how life affected the people around him, and he cared. He wanted to make it better. He would jump in and think about the consequences later.

When he came back from that operation in Syria, he was a different person. He was so happy to see me, so happy to be home. But..different. He couldn't settle down. Couldn't rest at night. Got angry so easily.

That first night we fought over where to eat. Where to eat! This was nothing like the Wyatt I had fallen in love with. Who fought for me against my parents' disapproval. So attentive and thoughtful. Instead he was jumpy and distant. He said he had missed me, but sometimes he looked at me like I was a stranger. When I touched him I could feel him trying not to pull away. Then he'd make a joke about it and put his arm around me. But there was something missing in his eyes.

And his jealousy. It didn't make any sense. He'd be closed off, distracted, then get so upset when I talked with a male friend. This is kind of weird, but it almost didn't sound like him. Wyatt could get angry, but this kind of..contempt that came from his mouth. It was nothing like the man I knew. Instead it reminded me of things I tried to get away from in leaving Texas.

* * *

Nobody but Wyatt believed I could get out. Not my parents, not my sister. I can count on one hand the kids from our school who ended up leaving West Texas. I loved growing up on my parents' ranch. Driving yearling calves bareback, staying up all night to see a horse being born, the smell of new hay in the barn. These are all memories I would never give up. But the wide open skies held nothing else for me.

All my friends' plans revolved around dancing and drinking all night, then working for an oil company or being a teacher, having kids. Getting married, and ending up like so many of our parents. Struggling in loveless marriages, weighed down by debt and children and dead dreams. Our parents had ridden the boom and bust times of our childhoods in the 80s. OPEC was a curse word when I was growing up. We kids remembered that time when uncles and cousins stood idle or traveled to Houston and Dallas to try to find work. But by the time we were coming up, the world offered some modest hopes. We didn't understand how much our parents had sacrificed to keep us going.

There was a year when my parents had to auction all but our best cows and herd bull to make it through the season. They would have lost the farm to the cost of feed otherwise. I slept in my horse Midnight's stall to keep them from selling her. I swore I'd work at the feed store, recycle cans, sell belt buckles to tourists, whatever it took to pay for her keep. They kept her. Only many years later, when Wyatt and I were going through photos of my childhood together, did I realize that they'd sold their car to pay for hay and feed for her through that winter. He held me so tight when I cried. I couldn't believe how selfish I'd been. He assured me they did it because they wanted me to be happy. Just like he did.

Midnight was still alive when he and I were first dating. I took Wyatt out on her to the mountain. Where we kissed for the first time.

When Wyatt told me about his parents, it reminded me of so many of my friends—but it was just so much worse for him. It was a miracle how that damage hadn't spoiled him. The dance of alcohol, pain and abuse, making up and watching it all come around again. There had to be something else than all this. I saw how big the world was. How we didn't have to be caught here. It was worth the risk. I wanted so much more.

His love was so strong. He told me things he told no one else. What his father had been like. How his mother would read to him and tell him stories when his dad came home drunk. How his dad accused her of being with his friends, with strange men. How he hit her. Things got better for him, but it always seemed like Wyatt didn't really believe in the future. Not a future for us together, or one in which he would truly be happy. I tried to get him to open up about it. But somehow we couldn't get through that barrier. Kids were a sore spot. When I was lucky, he'd laugh it off, saying there was plenty of time. When I picked the wrong time, he just froze. Closed off. I had to wait for him to come back to me. He couldn't face being a father? Or maybe couldn't believe that it could work out for him? Or was it me?

* * *

I remember his first deployment with Delta Force like it was yesterday. He'd been in the army for years at that point. Stationed in Afghanistan during our break, then off to Fort Benning after we got back together. I was so incredibly proud of him. The army had opened up whole dimensions of him that I'd guessed where there, but were waiting to be watered and grown to blossom.

During all of high school he just scraped by. Not failing, Grandpa Sherwin never would have tolerated that. But he was never motivated by school. As likely to sneak off to do some target practice and skip an afternoon class, or to help a friend fix his car all night and totally forget to do his homework. Yet then in class he could recite back, chapter and verse what his teacher had said. I don't know if he even realized he was doing it.

Later, when we lived in San Diego together I teased him about his "total recall." How else could he learn three languages in those few months they gave them language training for the Special Forces? He came in with Scottish Gaelic, thanks to his Grandpa, but German, Arabic and Russian? Totally unrelated languages that just rolled off his tongue in no time. He would look at me like I was crazy and talk about how there were all kinds of theories about learning multiple languages, "The third one is so much easier than the second, and with the fourth you're just making connections..." No way, Mr. Logan. It does not work that way for everyone. And how else, years later, could he remember all those stories about Midnight and the details about catching frogs and fireflies in the creek that I told him _once_ in high school? Much less find that very tree again, that one beautiful oak that we kissed under, to ask me to marry him? Or...the things I said that night after he had come back from Syria...when I was so blistering drunk and angry I didn't even remember the words until he threw them back at me. I'm so sorry I hurt you, Wyatt. You're nothing like your father must have been...

I don't think Wyatt ever thought he would or could go to college. It was that future thing. A wall. As though he didn't think there was anywhere he was heading, so why try hard to get there? It drove my father crazy. I couldn't describe to him what I saw in Wyatt. My dad just brought up Wyatt's father—how he beat Wyatt's mom and then died in jail—and how Wyatt was doing a whole lot of nothing with his life. Heading nowhere.

Sure his grandfather was a war hero, who got trotted out by the town each Veteran's Day. But Mr. Sherwin was a quiet, understated man. No one knew the extent of his bravery under fire until after he died. No one but Wyatt, of course. His eulogy for his grandfather was simple and profound. He told a story his grandfather had told him, about being there for a friend who'd been shot behind the lines in Germany. Just holding his hand as he died, and promising to bring his letters and dog tags to his widow. And how when he got back state side, he'd gotten permission to contact her. Looked in her eyes to tell her how much her man had loved her, talked of her as he died. Wyatt researched his Grandfather's career and gave an account of his deployments: the casualties, victories and losses he experienced. Grown men— _my_ father, even—shed some discreet tears over that funeral casket.

I never met his Mom. She died when he was 10 or 11. But his Grandpa Sherwin, that is another story. Wyatt and I were just friends for a while, but the night he first asked me out he took me back home THAT NIGHT to meet Grandpa Sherwin. I did not know what to expect and was kind of terrified. The old gent ran a tight ship. The 100 year old house was immaculate. Probably looked just the same as it had in 1952 when he and the late, lamented Mrs. Sherwin bought it to raise their children. The lace curtains still on the windows had been made by Grandma Sherwin, and Grandpa kept Wyatt off the street in the summers by making him scrape and paint the house, clean the curtains, mow the lawn. I shouldn't have been scared. Mr. Sherwin was all quiet grace and thoughtfulness. He saw how nervous I was and put me at ease by asking if I'd like to see some of his relics from the war. Wyatt later told me he never brought those out. I asked Mr. Sherwin how he got through. He said as long as he had his friends with him, he felt he could do anything to be there for them. He said the only time he lost that belief was when he helped his unit liberate one of the Nazi slave labor complexes, Kaufering. He couldn't say anything about what he saw there. He simply said, "We must not let hate and fear turn us into monsters."

Wyatt's mom loved him, I know, and tried to shield him from the worst of his father's excesses. He only lived alone with his dad one year after she died. Only one year until the benders led to fights and then one fight led to a death. When Wyatt's father was put in jail for manslaughter Grandpa Sherwin took Wyatt in for good. What that year did to him, I think Mr. Sherwin spent all the rest of the time they had together trying to undo. I met Wyatt two years after his father died, and even then the look he would give me, or anyone, when they tried to comfort him for that loss. It was...murderous.

We didn't meet until Wyatt was a senior and I was a sophomore. We didn't run in the same circles. Wyatt just scraped by and avoided school, while I was busy prepping for college. We probably never would have met if it hadn't been for that day in El Paso outside the abortion clinic. I and my friends volunteered for Jane's Due Process to stand support outside the women's health office once a month. Wyatt was helping a friend and his sister Polly make the long trip to get there and get care.

There was a huge crowd of protesters that day. I was walking next to Polly. I don't remember how the man in the cheap dark blue suit got in my face crying about hellfire, so close his spittle hit me. But all of a sudden Wyatt was there, forcing himself between us and taking all the vitriol the man was spewing onto himself. I'm sure that guy threw the first punch, but Wyatt gave as good right back. He hurt the man. I had to hold him back. It's too easy to think that it's right to answer violence in kind. Their tussle broke open the crowd in a panic, and we were lucky to get Polly inside before the police arrived. My mom helped us bail Wyatt out. Not the best way to meet your future son in law...

* * *

We almost didn't end up together. If you'd asked me who I would marry while I was packing up my car to head out west to San Diego, I would have told you some writer or a hippy, or philosopher that I'd meet at UCSD. It broke my heart to leave him, but I'd told Wyatt that I needed to see what else the world held. He just didn't seem to have any thought of leaving our town. He supported me going off and finding what I needed. I had no idea that he had enlisted in the Army by the time he was helping me pull the posters off my walls and pack up my things in the car to head out to California.

And there he was. Two years later at the Sun God Festival on campus. On leave and dancing with me to Third Eye Blind—despite hating that band. And it was like we'd never left each other for a moment. Except that everything had changed. That Wyatt I had glimpsed in high school was all of who he was now. The manners his grandfather gave him. The loving heart his mother left behind. That quiet insight into others—somehow he always knew when I was tired or hungry before I even did—the military had taken that potential and honed it, and given him people to care for and be there for. He talked about the men and women he served with like I'd never heard him talk about anyone. Except maybe Grandpa Sherwin. He opened up, laughing and joking so much more. When he told me he was going for it to get into Delta Force, it was like he was finally finding his path. Those walls had crumbled. And somehow, I was still there with him, on the inside.

When we went back home for Grandpa Sherwin's funeral, he took me out to that tree and asked me to be his forever. Those years we had before he went to Syria—they were challenging—living apart when he went on missions was hard. Worrying what might happen to him...that never got easier. But the joy on his face when he came back to me was amazing. I felt so close to him, even when he was far away. He felt he was making a difference; he so belonged. It was all worth it. Until that operation in Syria.

And then those walls were back. He came home with the purple heart they gave him. Threw the box on a shelf and didn't look at it. Wouldn't talk about it. He stopped talking about his fellow soldiers and the missions. It was like the light had gone out for him. He dutifully enrolled in counseling and attended every week. He went through the paces. He put on a brave face and said everything was fine. But there was something different inside him. Like his heart had been broken. And I wasn't on the inside any more. I was outside again, where even I couldn't reach him.

* * *

The nights have been bad. He wakes up crying sometimes. Other times in a panic. I feel like he needs to go through his process. But the distance seems to be growing, not healing. He's always been so aware of the emotional damage of war. He's been there for friends who went through bad patches in their lives and relationships. Talked with them, helped them trust enough to get help. I've seen him catch himself in his fears and anxiety before and work it through with me and his shrink.

But this time, it's like he's in deep water. He can't find his way to the surface, and our helping hands aren't reaching him. He hides it behind an easy laugh, or asking me about my work, but I can see there's more going on.

I think he's scared. I can see it in his eyes when things are the worst. Sometimes when he drinks, he gets possessive and angry. And afraid. He almost started a fight at a bar last week. And he's drinking too much. He swerved on the road on the way home, but wouldn't listen to me. I never feel any threat from him toward myself, but I'm beginning to wonder about the danger he's putting himself in. His job puts him in jeopardy all the time. What happens if this current drags him under when he's in the field, and he doesn't have a way to resist it any more? Who will be there for him?

But I'm just catching glimpses. He used to be so open, so willing to share. Now I feel like that old Wyatt from high school is back. Where the future is closed off again. When I touched him he used to light up. Now he more often looks at me as though I'm far away and he can't see it's me. When I talk about the future, it's like all the plans I'm talking about will just crumble. Why believe, why commit.

Wyatt, what are you doing? I'd give anything to have the man back who asked me to marry him under that oak tree. I'd do anything to see hope in your eyes again. What will it take for you to trust me? Am I holding you back? If you need something else I want to let you go, just like you let me take a chance going off on my own to college. I love you. I want you to be happy. And I want to be happy. Maybe we just can't help each other do that anymore.

Sweet Wyatt. Please come back. Or let me go.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Lucy's thoughts while they are traveling through time to Chicago 1931 in Public Enemy No. 1. Continuing angst. Heading for some resolution with Wyatt next. (Lyatt all the way)**

 **Chapter 3: Lucy**

I thought I would never see him again after he left my house to save Jess.

If you'd asked me before he walked in the door that night, I would never have admitted it but I knew. I knew how much I cared about him. Almost losing him at the Alamo. That kiss in Arkansas... But then when he told me he was going to get back Jessica and he wouldn't let me help. When he said how much he would sacrifice—I couldn't deny it to myself any more. From the first moment we met, he was not just any hired gun. "The soldier." My soldier. My guy. Damn you Garcia Flynn, but yes, my Wyatt.

* * *

I trust him, depend on him. This insanity of chasing Flynn, who chases Rittenhouse, who chases world domination across time has bound us all together: me, Rufus, Wyatt. When you step across that threshold coming home and know that anything could have happened. Any of our loved ones may be gone. Any of us could be erased from existence. We're only beginning to understand the full repercussions of this machine. Rufus and Wyatt are the only two fixed points in my chaotic universe right now.

So fine. Rufus and Wyatt are my guys. Like best friends from kindergarten and college, crossed with army buddies and fellow ex-con old-timers all in one. There's really no one else that knows the world we know. I would do any thing for Rufus. He's put himself in danger for me and Wyatt, and used that brilliant mind to save us all. We've all gone to the wall for one another, many times over.

But I want something more from Wyatt. That thing I've watched Rufus and Jiya find together. That bolt of lightning I had pretty much given up on. No time for it with my career, caring for my Mom, watching out for Amy. Pushing so hard for my career to take me down the road my Mother had laid out for me. Living up to her reputation, growing up in her shadow. No time for myself. Losing that chance at tenure wasn't just losing a job. It was failing. Failing her and failing what I'd worked so long for. What was the point of it all?

My head is spinning from all the changes. Losing Amy. Gaining a fiancé I've never seen before. A poor innocent in all this whose dreams I'm destroying. Finding my Father at long last. But he's not just a your everyday dead-beat Dad—he seems to be a modern day Machiavelli. Threatening my friends, using us all in some centuries-spanning game that ends in..my bloodline ruling the world? My Mother, is blessedly healthy. At least I have her back, but if I save Amy, will I just lose Mom again?

We all could have died so many times. Wyatt, fighting for us, could have died so many different ways. Watching David go down made that real. Just a moment's error. I honestly can't believe that I can open my eyes right now and see Wyatt sitting there right across from me. Getting nauseous like usual but full of confidence and assurance for Rufus and me, like the whole secret apparatus of the US government and Rittenhouse wasn't after us. Like he wasn't just saved from being disappeared into black site detention.

The steady stream of alternately solid and scary replacements they provided for Wyatt since he stole the Lifeboat has really driven it home. In Paris, I kept half-turning to ask him something. Then I'd remember that he was who knows where, locked up by the government. For trying to do what anyone would in his position—just try to rescue the person he most dearly loved in the world.

* * *

What am I doing anyway. Having feelings like this for a man that will never return them, when against all reason, I suddenly have a man ready to devote his life to mine. If only I could stand letting Noah touch me, or bear to be with him for more than a few moments. I just freeze up every time he gets close to me. And when he kisses me... I don't understand. I can see in his eyes how much I mean to him. He's attractive, accomplished, caring. He has been so patient as I've pushed him away and taken space since everything changed. How can I tell him that the whole life he's built around our...relationship is just gone. I have to do the same thing to him that's been done to me. Crush all hopes of the life he thought he could lead. How can I? But then, how could I?

Noah's been so understanding. Far more than my Mother has been. She can't stop hounding me to talk to him, go back "home" she says, go back where I belong. How can I explain to her that my home is gone? Or how could I possibly tell her that home to me means a world where she's terminally ill? Where I have a sister she's never even met. I want them both back. I'd give anything to be able to go out to the cabin again and play cards with my Mom and Amy, both healthy and happy. But that would be some world that has never existed. What right do I have to manipulate time and space, other people's lives, just to get what I want. If Wyatt can't have his wife back, despite all he did to save her and those two other poor women, how could I possibly ever expect to have my family together?

My whole life I've been walking this path laid out before me. Learning to love history from my Mother. Looking up to her and seeing what a difference I could make by following her lead. Opening up people's eyes to how important the past is. How it forms us and shapes everything about our lives. How one person can make such a difference, and how people acting together can literally change the course of the world.

My father and Amy would chide Mom sometimes for pushing me so hard, but I loved it. She never put the same pressure on Amy. I always imagined it was because my sister just didn't take to what my Mother loved so much. Amy didn't know what she wanted to do, but that never seemed like a problem. She was the one who helped me relax and kick back. Take time for myself, which was so hard to do when I had so much to measure up to. My Mother got a double masters by the time she was 21, three PhDs by the time she was 27, and was the youngest—and the first woman—to head the history department at Stanford. The insights she had into so many periods of our past. The pieces she's been able to bring together from such varied and disparate evidence. She's opened up whole new fields of inquiry. I was going to follow up and do the same kind of ground-breaking work she did. How could I let her down by doing anything else? How could I let go of my own passion to continue this work?

Then somehow that future fell apart. No tenure. I'm not in line to lead the department. How could my plans go so wrong? What did I do wrong? Was I just being arrogant, assuming it would all fall in my lap? But right then, after my whole world was shook, this completely unthinkable way of engaging history opened up for me. Don't just study and imagine the past, but actually **be** there. It fits like a glove. Rufus is right, aside from the danger this job has incredible allure. I get to speak to the people whom we revere and abjure for having shaped our world. Find out what their lives are like, how they think and feel. The small details that get swept away in the rush of time. Letters could never tell just how Lincoln hesitated over my hand when he reached out to hold it. The rush of heat from the Hindenberg. The love of the families at the Alamo. And those people behind the scenes who actually made things happen—Rittenhouse crawling like a spider through the shadowy corners of time—can be pulled into the light. Stopped, even. Not just seeing history, but making it ourselves.

Making history. Unmaking history. What hubris. What am I doing? Who do I think I am? How can I possibly not do this? How can I possibly continue?

* * *

So Noah. No. Wyatt was completely right. This can't work. (I can never tell him—he would be so smug.) But when Noah kisses me with passion it brings me to panic. Meanwhile, just having Wyatt buckle me into my rickety chair in this nightmare diving bell through time gives me such a feeling of safety and peace. Noah is a stranger. Wyatt makes places that used to terrify me feel like home.

And I have no illusions about the likelihood of any chance with him. The very first thing I learned about Wyatt of any substance was that he still grieved for his lost wife. I watched him risk his job, life and the unknown consequences of changing time to have a shot at saving a woman that just _reminded_ him of Jessica. Poor, poor Kate. And the other night...he threw everything away for his only chance at saving Jess. Then he lost it. Lost her, inescapably. I can only imagine how he feels. How that rocked him to the core. It killed me to have to tell him that Jess was still dead. The way he looked when we told him, he seemed like a different person. How did he come back to himself? I do not understand how he looks so level. So confident and sure about the new direction we have to go in.

All that is against it, but I'm so totally lost that I don't care. My Mother always told me about how it was love at first sight for her and my father..her husband Henry. Seemed like a nice fairy tale. I always took it as that, she made everything such a good story. But now, I am struck. I met this reckless hot-head who somehow saw inside me right away. When I was losing it in Germany—impersonating spies, surrounded by literal Nazis, this wasn't me! I'm a teacher, a researcher. Not an actress or operative. How could I possibly do this? Even with the help of James bloody Bond, Ian Fleming himself.

Wyatt saw that right away. And didn't take me to task for it or try and force me to go outside of my comfort zone. He knew what I was going through because he'd been there and found a way to help me work through it. Noah, my fiance and presumably lover of years, doesn't see my unease, yet Wyatt who has known me such a short while is aware immediately. He really sees the people he's with. Rufus' worry. The courage of the people at the Alamo. Reassuring me about my Father after he'd just been detained. He is so present with the people around him. Despite his own fears and burdens. Wyatt has shared his gift with me so generously. He saw what was going on with me from the start. He SAW me. Not the me I'm always trying to be, but the scared part that couldn't be like confident like my Mom. That couldn't believe I could do it. That part I try so hard to never let anyone see.

But I did let him see. That night, on the stairs. I couldn't hide how I felt. I don't know what he saw, but this time Wyatt couldn't get me over the hump.

After Germany it just became so easy to rely on him. We all relied on one another so much. Rufus, Wyatt, despite all my knowledge about each place we travelled to, I never would have survived without them. And it felt so safe to turn to Wyatt. I can't believe I didn't see what was happening right away. That day I tried to get to know Noah, what timing. Only to end up in Wyatt's arms hours later "pretending" to kiss. Another engagement day I didn't recall. Only this time the pretence was so real for me.

And damn me, some part of me holds out hope that he felt something, too. That look in his eyes after he kissed me... Not that I've known consciously. I had just enough inkling to realize as he told me he was going to save Jessica—as he'd always planned to—and it laid waste to me. Blasted away the hope and love and desire and contentment I'd found with Wyatt. As my team mate. As my friend.

My friend that I would do all in my power to get back to the woman he truly loves. My friend who has devoted his life to serving others, even when he lost all his own hope of happiness. Who carries all those he left behind with him, always. And always, always saw the people we met in the past as living, breathing people. With lives and loves that they deserved to cling to. And has questioned every step of the way the orders he's been given, even while trying his best to carry out the mission.

* * *

*Sneaking a peek* Yes, he's still there. This is not some dream. Rufus will be landing the Lifeboat soon. One more time after Flynn, and then who knows. But I have this moment with Wyatt, this time with both of them. I'll make the most of it, and be grateful for the crazy friendship we all share. It's not nothing, and who knows how long we all have. At least Rufus and Jiya found one another. At least I had my moment to feel this kind of love. At least I can be there for them. And there with him.

And try not to hope for more.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Wyatt's thoughts while he's in the secret detention area during The Lost Generation. Some harsh language and hot-button issues (abortion rights, domestic violence) talked about here. A nod to "Thank You." (And spent altogether too much time looking at freeze-frame images of Wyatt's research in Atomic City.)**

 **Oh it's so long, I'm sorry. Love to hear your thoughts about this cycle. May do one more chapter as a tag bringing Lucy & Wyatt together. Need some lightness after all this angst! Thank you so much for the reviews and favorites for my first set of stories. You've been so kind and supportive!**

 **[updated 4/24/2017: No changes here. But instead of a tag, there will be a few chapters following up with Wyatt & Lucy, called Talk to Me. Will post soon!]**

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Wyatt**

I thought I would never see her again after everything went wrong when I tried to save Jess. I may never see her, or any of them again, now.

After leaving Jess on the road, that night I went to Lucy's is the stupidest moment of my life. Well, actually, it's more like a string of them isn't it? Telling Lucy. Leaving Lucy behind. Going to that bar. Not listening to Rufus. Stalking Gilliam's mother like a maniac. Chasing that poor man in the rain...

I could feel it happening. You ever get that feeling when you're making the wrong choice, that it just doesn't feel like you anymore? Like you're on some kind of ride and it's taking you places that you don't want to go, but you can't get off? Moments happen like that in a firefight. It's going way too fast for you to think, to react. To feel with your emotions—instead you must react, react, react. But it's just snap-see it, make a choice-shoot/run/yell, react again... If I did take time to think more deeply, I'd be dead.

But I didn't think, and now he's dead.

* * *

I've killed a lot of people. Not just in war. From that first henchman of Flynn's in the warehouse in New Jersey, to Santa Anna's men at the Alamo, to Henry Holmes, Mudget whatever Lucy said his real name was. In each of those moments I knew, they had to die. To defend my friends, to stand with people I respected, to protect the innocent, to correct the balance of time, even. But to avenge deaths? Did I have that right? Does the fact that we have this tin box with a slinky on top that takes us through time, and this insane mission that comes from—who really? Agent Christopher? Homeland Security? Rittenhouse? Does all that power give us the right to fix things by killing?

Maybe they needed someone like Bass Reeves, not me, to be their soldier. I've even put that on Lucy now. Beautiful, caring Lucy. Who stood down an enraged, armed and homicidally dangerous Flynn to protect a child from him. A child who may even be the founder of what threatens her and all she loves. She killed Jesse James for the mission, and for me. So I didn't have to.

Lucy, who was there for me even when I asked her to stand by and let me go make the stupidest mistake of my life, as I tried to fix the deepest mistake of my life—letting Jess walk away from me that night in San Diego. "Sure, Lucy, here, just let me go possibly get myself and Rufus killed." I was leaving her where she was "safe" (as if that has any meaning with the way Rittenhouse gets into people's lives). But really, where I didn't have to worry about her. As if I was helping her get her sister back by taking our best friend and pilot into an unknown situation and risking who knows what penalties myself. I hope Rufus forgives me some day. (Jiya would never have forgiven me if he'd been hurt, or worse..) But then what did Lucy do but try to protect me and defend me to Agent Christopher? And then she has to face down her own father who turns out to be Rittenhouse. Alone.

I let her down. I let the team down. I let Jess down.

* * *

I've felt that way before. That feeling that everything is on auto-pilot and I'm out of control. After I came home from Syria. I felt like I was in an echo chamber. I could hear what people were saying around me, but none of it made sense. I couldn't feel any of it. Just tried to drag myself through every day. Trying to make it all right for Jessica.

I never did get what she saw in me. She was amazing in high school. We met during that fight at the abortion clinic, but I knew who she was long before then. Top of the class, head of the debate team and on the cheer-leader squad. Her life was like a rocket taking off. Our school was small potatoes but she would have stood out anywhere. She had so many hopes and dreams for what she could accomplish. Of course. And she would have if only..if only that rotten chance and my poor choices didn't get in her way.

I fell for her in a moment. Picture this: a huge crowd of people in an El Paso parking lot, pro-life protesters, women and their families trying to make the hardest decision in their lives, or just get health care, and in the middle of it all this a slight, determined blonde 16 year-old determined to save the world one person at a time. She was helping my old friend Ray's sister, Polly. Just walking with her to the door, talking to her calm-like and helping her navigate through the crowd. Many people on both sides were reasonable, unreasonable, everything in between. But suddenly this tall, middle-aged fellow with a salt-and-pepper beard and one very badly fitting blue suit sees that Polly and Jess are getting close to the door. He pushes his way over to them. His sign said "Defend Life." Sure, buddy.

Then he starts going on this rant about how she was murdering her baby. That God saw into her heart and was going to put her into a firey ring of hell where she would have to relive that moment for eternity if she aborted her child. Polly wasn't even pregnant. Jess was amazing. She tried to reason with him. Just put her open hand out and looked him in the eye. I could see the blood rising in his face. I got in between them in just the nick of time. He was raising his fist to Jess. He screamed at me to mind my own business and lashed out at me instead. The crowd was so close I couldn't dodge so he clipped me. I started getting swept up in his anger, and the shouting of the crowd so when I swung back I meant business. He dropped and I went after him, but Jess stopped me. In all of that, she said "This is not the way." She was right. I looked down at what I was doing, and I just saw my father there. That was the first night I spent in jail.

Jess tried to help me keep it quiet by getting her family to help, but I told Grandpa Sherwin when I got home. He understood. "Sometimes you have to break the rules to do what's right." I didn't tell him how it felt when I hit that man. I knew what he'd seen in the war. I told myself I'd never do that again. That I'd learned my lesson. But maybe I was lying to myself all these years.

* * *

When I stole the Lifeboat, I knew I was endangering everyone I now hold dear. And despite that, I know I'd do it again in a minute. Still, that is one of two things I will most regret in my life. Well, maybe one of three.

When I told her, told Lucy that anything was worth it to get Jess back, I knew I was grasping at straws. I knew my words to Lucy and Rufus about "not hurting anyone" were untrue. Just like I lied to Bass Reeves, I lied to them, I lied to myself. I knew my real mission and that I would do what was needed. No matter the cost.

I knew I would make myself into someone Jessica would hate. Just like Flynn. He didn't kill his child, Iris, but he would kill David Rittenhouse's child to get her back. I didn't kill Jess, but I would trade someone else's life to ensure that the man who did it would never exist. And saving those other girls—that was probably the best part of this scheme. But it was really just a way for me to smooth over the lie. Quiet their questions. And let me go so far over the edge of all things necessary that I found myself threatening an innocent man and woman at gunpoint to keep them from having sex. Her voice when he said he would leave: "Don't leave me!" I'd heard that voice before. My mom, me, afraid of my father.

I didn't mean to kill him. But I was willing to. Jess was so right, this is not the way.

* * *

I wasn't myself when I came home from that mission in Syria. I couldn't tell Jess what I'd been through, because I couldn't face it myself. Tried to make light of things. Forget about it. Work it through but quick with the psychiatrist. I knew the drill. I'd helped friends make it.

But I had no idea. I was in the bottom of the well looking up, but I didn't know it. I just kept sinking deeper and deeper. I couldn't..I didn't feel comfortable any more when Jess touched me. And that was so, just, wrong that I couldn't admit it. Sleeping in bed with her I'd stare up at the ceiling. I had to leave the bed to get any rest. And then I'd sneak back into bed before she woke up in the morning. Or that was what I told myself. Looking back now, of course she knew. She was just giving me space. What she must have thought.

And that night in February...it wasn't the first time that I had blown up like that. Jealousy? What was I thinking? I know now. It wasn't anything Jess did. Sure, we did actually run into an old boyfriend of hers that night, but it had been years since there was anything between them. They dated during our break, when she first went out to college. And they were broken up already by the time she and I got back together. I was way out of line. I, honestly, was not in my right mind.

That psychiatrist who worked with me after Syria was all right. She did what she could and was keeping with me. We still talked once a month right up until... But I was keeping her on the outside. Waaay, outside. Just like I was doing to Jess. It just hurt, way too much to go anywhere near what I was really feeling.

And it was only when I lost Jess that I came anywhere close to seeing what I'd been hiding from myself. I wasn't just distant and out of sorts when I came back. I was suicidal. I was terrified. I was full of rage. It was all I could do to keep a lid on it. I started drinking more, and when I drank, it came out. Yes, my fear and guilt about surviving in Syria. Yes, the damage that battle took on my mind, and the incredible regret I felt about being the one to make it out. But more than that...it was my guilt and pain at surviving my father. At not being able to protect my mother from him. And the anger...that was the worst of it. I didn't just want to get back at my dad, I wanted to BE my dad. The one in control. The one everyone was afraid of. The one who called the shots. The one that everyone had to listen to. The one who knew best for everyone else.

But that is not me. That is not who my mom and grandpa raised me to be. That's not who Jess loved. And I pray that's not who my friends care about now. No. The single gift that losing Jess gave me was making me hit bottom and making me face my demons squarely. It was deal with them or die.

* * *

When Jess disappeared, the police talked to everyone we'd seen that night. They took me in for questioning, careful not to call me a suspect, but I had to call Jess' sister from the police station. When she and her parents arrived I was still in the interrogation room. And from there, it was talking with the press, working with the police on any leads, and then, the next day, they found her...

You know, a strange thing? Flynn got that wrong. He got so much wrong about her death, actually. We ate at George's at the Cove. And she wasn't missing for two weeks, just a day. Maybe it was that other Lucy who wrote about it, maybe she was from another timeline where it was even worse? I can't imagine how it would have been if we'd had to face that kind of suspense. Jessica's family just shut me out. If only we'd been able to connect right away, but they never got to see my grief. And I lost them, too.

The month's leave I took turned into three months, turned into six. My buddies came around every so often and I tried hard to be dressed and sober when I met them. It was Teddy who found me the day I lost it. Blacked out from alcohol poisoning. I have no idea when I'd last eaten. He took me to the hospital, and then they kept a watch on me. Somebody checked in every other day when I got home. And It was Bam Bam who found me the shrink that stuck. He reminded me a bit of Grandpa Sherwin. Wouldn't take no for an answer. But he was kind, too. I was ready. I'd tried to let alcohol finish the job, but I didn't want to die. It took months for me to come out of the worst of it, but then I was ready to get back to work. Ready to get back into missions. I had so many regrets, I had make good somehow.

* * *

And I think I've found my chance now. Found it, then threw it away. Working with Rufus and Lucy just seemed like any other assignment at first. Yeah, sure, like any other assignment where I'd been tossed into a comic book or a Spielberg movie, maybe. But I knew the parameters. Get in, get out. Kill the target, protect civilians. Protect my team mates.

I was so wrong. There is nothing normal about this situation. I met and fought alongside Jim Bowie. I met, in the flesh (and lied my ass off to) George Washington. I held the hand of my friend to comfort her while she was covered in the fresh-spilled blood of Abraham Lincoln. She pulled me out of an emotional death spiral and literally saved me from dying at the Alamo. I have traveled through time with the very engineer who broke that barrier. Our moonshot.

There's nothing normal at all about this.

And coming back from it? I haven't been able to shake this obsession with getting Jessica back. Just having the temptation to use the time machines to go back and find some way to change things. It was like an opportunity on a silver platter to make good, finally. But that was just an illusion. Just like wanting to die at the Alamo. It wouldn't have brought back the men who died in Syria to let me go. And somehow even being responsible for Wes Gilliam's father dying didn't bring back Jessica.

I have to let her go.

I've let her go before. In high school, when we graduated. She was ready to take on the world. I had no idea what the world could offer me. Or what I could offer it. I'd kind of always figured she'd break up with me at some point. I lost track of how many times the football quarterback asked her out. Her co-captain in debate, Debby, was completely in love with her. No soap. Here she was with me, a no-good-Logan. I never got it. Of course she'd want to go. I couldn't face the idea of being in town without her. I decided to followed in Grandpa Sherwin's footsteps. Make him proud. Best decision of my life. I had no idea how much I needed a home like the Army gave me. A family. People to be there for. To trust. Even to fight with, but to be there. It gave me the confidence to track down Jess when I was on leave. Miracle of miracles, she was free—and she wanted to be with me! I still don't get it. Being with her in San Diego gave me the idea to go for Delta Force. It felt so right. Working towards Special Forces, learning so much. I felt like I'd been freed. Like I could finally be myself. And then come home to Jessica. I knew she'd be okay without me. She had so much she was going to accomplish. She never really needed me. Just...loved me. And shared her life with me like a gift I could never repay.

All that turned on its head when I came back home from Syria. All that trust I thought I felt, it was burned away. All I felt now was the distance. Couldn't understand why she was with me. Saw all the reasons why she would want to leave me. All my faults, all my flaws, all my shortcomings. I tried to bottle them up, but they came out. That night was the worst of it. I lashed out at her ex-boyfriend. I lashed out at her. Anything to keep from seeing who I really wanted to hurt. Myself.

Just like coming back from 1983. I can finally see how much I was throwing away. How much I'd risked losing. Rufus, Lucy...

* * *

You know that third thing? My other regret? Not kissing Lucy just once more. On the stair. What if the world we came back to didn't have her in it? What if she knew me but I was as little to her as that fake fiancé, Noah? What if she didn't care. Somehow, miraculously, she's still here. At this point, I may in fact never see her again, but I know she knows me. And I think she cares. In fact, if I'm completely honest with myself, I know she cares. I know she needs me. She as good as said that night, on the stairs. And then threw it back in my face, all her love and concern with that damned, "What do you need me to do?"

I think I need her.

I've tortured myself for losing Jessica. I pushed her away when she needed me. I think I pushed her away from the very start. But I've got to accept that the mistakes I've made are ones I have to live with. I think I can finally accept them.

Jess would want me to stop. She would want me to let her go. She'd slap me up-side the head and say: "Get a grip, soldier. You're alive. You've got a life to lead. Now live it." She tried so hard to help me come back after I lost so much in the war. She would want me to live and love now. Not follow her... I've got someone to love. Someone who needs me right now. PEOPLE who need me. If they can ever forgive me. What am I doing?

How many mistakes can I make and keep getting another chance? I think this time I have got to slow down. I've got to take the time to think and to feel.

I just hope it's not too late. I hope I wasn't dreaming that she kissed me back in Arkansas. If I can get out of this, somehow, I hope Lucy will let me be there for her. Like she's been there for me. This time, this chance if I get one, I'm going to take the risk. I'm going to slow down and trust. I cannot outrun my demons. But I can take a stand here, with my friends. And with someone I think, I know loves me.


End file.
